Swimming with the Blowfish, Hoody Healing, and One hell of a Ride. That's a great title. It's the book by Jim Sonefeld. Everyone calls him Sony, the drummer for Hoody and the Blowfish, a songwriter and now also a solo artist. Now I've known Sony for more than twenty five years. Hoody and the ESPN squad were closely connected in the nineties.
To quote his bandmate Darius Rucker in the books Forward, Sony has lived a life that is rife with fun and pain, light and darkness, but always with an amazing amount of love. We talk about all kinds of things. How soccer dreams led him to South Carolina where he connected with Hoody. That's an incredible story that started with a devastating fire. Sony tells rock and roll tales, from the early struggles to selling more than ten million records,
winning two Grammys. We have plenty of laughs, but Sony also really opens up about his addiction and recovery and his faith. Our conversation is honest, authentic, and inspiring. Well, Sony, It's awesome to reconnect with you after more than a couple of decades. Podcasts can serve that purpose too, and it's great to see your smiling, bald headed face. And we've got a lot to talk about, a lot of ground to cover, So thanks for coming on.
So glad to reconnect. And it's a funny world that way. But you know, then you look up and you're maybe a little older, but we have great memories.
We hope wiser too. Yeah, well you're a very funny guy. There is the funny, there is the heavy, and there's everything in between the cover. But first off, I want to start with a decision that you made when you're young.
And so often our lives, the course of them, is changed by a decision that is to many others ill advised along and you're a young soccer player from the Midwest and you decide that you're good enough to go down to South Carolina and walk on to a very elite soccer program against the odds, and just by going to that school and that state and following that path, it seems like so many other things in your life, your music career, the loves of your life, all of
that came from that one decision to jump in a car with your brother and drive from Illinois to South Carolina to try to make the soccer team.
Yeah, well it shows I am nothing if not a host of human contradictions in my life. Many before that decision and many more after, But that was one where I sort of followed a gut instinct which I have not always done, and said, I think I can do
this thing. I've played amongst all state players in Illinois, and there were many, I wasn't an All state player and in that award, and I look at the rosters in the Southeast where there were some big teams like NC State, Clemson, and South Carolina was on the rise, and I thought, that's the place I want to do something different.
I want to get out of the.
Cold, and I want to try it. Honestly, you know, maybe the best plans, when they work, are the ones that don't have a backup, because they look very courageous and brave. I didn't have a backup besides being a student, which would never have suited me enough compared to soccer, which had drawn me my whole life. So I had a little roster of picture back in the eighties and it was the team, the South Carolina team from the previous year, and I had xed out. Okay, he's a senior,
he's graduating, he's leaving. Oh, he's transferred. And I had like it narrowed it down to these guys and I saw where they were from and what their stats were. I had dreamed up this dream based on a piece of paper and a promise from our coach to get a try out, a fair tryout. It was thinly advised, but you know, again, one of those things that looks pretty cool when you achieve it. I would have probably looked like it wasn't very well thought out if I had not achieved it.
I don't know, man, looking at the looking at the roster and the calculating what your chances were, that's that's more than most walk ons do. But I love the fact that you said you followed your gut, your instinct, and to do that you got to clear out the static. And I know later in your life it was harder to clear out the static and listen to your gut. And that's the same thing for all of us, whether
it's static from within or static around us. Clearing that away and making this choice that ended up working out great and led to so many other things. Although your soccer career, you write in your book about the ups and downs within that career, which kind of mirrors some of the ups and downs in your larger life. What does the number one point one signify oring that part of your life, And we're not talking about lad alcohol content at this point, that's later one point one.
It probably would sounds like it was around my grade point average my freshman year. And that was the other part that was not well thought out. Oh, college is to get a degree. It's not to run around a soccer field. I hadn't thought much about the books and the time it would take to get proper grades to be a student athlete. So if that's what you're talking about that one point one, that's what I remember.
You cock to that in your book and it's like almost a blue Tarski GPA. But the happy thing is you came back and you ended up turning that around, turning your career around. But music at this point, you right, You weren't in a band until you're twenty one, which is really late for a lot of people that listeners here playing music. Generally, they were in bands from a much younger age. I know you were drumming from a younger age, but you finally get music, passion kind of
begins to take more charge. And although you did want to go to a grateful dead show, I think you said it was it was two days after for a soccer game, and all you want to do is drop acid and go to a dead show and not play soccer. But that thankful that that plan didn't end up happening.
The wiser voices prevailed, thankfully.
But but not getting around you know in bands just you know, playing for the fun of it, playing for the love of music. You talk about that because that's a part of the development of so many musicians. And when you did get into a band, and back in Colombia, Toody in the Jones was one of the early bands, right tout in the Jones to Hoody and the Blowfish. I don't know what the odds are going between two bands with those names.
Yeah I didn't. I was not blessed with being in the greatest band named bands. There are many bad, dumb names, but I had the only Hoodie Toody that I ever canna remember in life. And you know, part part of my journey was like sports. I had a period where, you know, I was born a drummer, so I could drum on my own and I had that that is was in my blood from a young age and it
was always going to be there. But it was picking up an acoustic guitar in college and then a piano and having fun with it to say this is an interest of mine. I'm under no pressure. I'm not you know, travel, I'm not being forced to do this. I'm enjoying it,
and I'm growing and developing as I went. That was kind of an important part of my journey, even for my sport of soccer, because I played other sports, and back in that year, I don't think there was as much pressure on athletes at a young age to be in a system, to be on a club, to be signed in, signed up, and you got to play seven days a week and you can't play other sports. Music for me was that thing that was an interest that I needed time to develop and realize.
No one's putting this on me.
There's not a coach above me, there's not a parent looking over my shoulder, there's not an expectation. Music was this love in my heart that developed when I picked up a guitar and melodies came out, and when I picked up a piano. I didn't pick up a piano, I guess I sat down in front of it technic and realized, there's a beautiful thing that's connecting me to all the music I've listened to as a child.
So I liked that I had that.
Period of time to just enjoy something before it became serious. And maybe kids today, because I've raised a handful of student athletes, that's too much. We get them so serious so early in their sport, in their singular lane, that it takes some of the joy away. And so music was never taken away from me as a joyful interest.
I'm thankful for that.
Was it love of the process more than concern about fortune and fame that obviously you came later in a different band. Was it just playing music brought you joy and you weren't trying to get somewhere with it, you were just trying to enjoy it.
Yeah, I was. I was very much in the moment. I was training on the job, I was seeing the results. For making music is first in your own heart. You make a song, you're amused, you're delighted by a rhyme you've come up with with that you sound a little bit like a good song that you've heard on the radio. You feel that little self accomplishment. But then getting in front of people in bars at twenty one for the first time to see the reaction, that was kind of cool.
It was similar to sports and getting a round of applause. But it was also never competition, and I'm thankful that that music has never felt like a competition for me or my bandmates's we.
Get to do it, we love doing it. Let's do it.
You know. There was no we're beating them, or we have to compete against some other band. We never looked at it that way, and there are bands, there are artists who do and take it rather seriously.
We never had that.
We knew we get to be on stage. This is fun, this is you know, what we were meant to do. So sports was different that way. Music was just wow, I'm coming up with melodies. You know, I'm starving, I can't pay rents, But those seem to be less of a worry than the joy we got on stage.
Speaking of rent, you writing your book about one of those events in life that is horrible at the time but creates an experience in growth you lose I guess almost everything you have in a fire in your apartment building, and at that point your parents had gotten divorced. I believe you really had no home to go back to. You had nowhere to go and not much to your name.
And it was through that experience that you got connected with Mark Bryant, the guitarist in Hoodie, and you talk about your first connection with that band was an act of love and generosity on your behalf, which is a very cool origin story.
Yeah, and honestly, I didn't connect that until I sat down to start writing the book and looking at the greater the picture from above, like, wait, the thing that connected us was, you know, I remember auditioning for the band, but really, when I went back further, it was the fact that I was found myself homeless, and I went instinctively to the place where I would go for some solace in college, a bar, right, That's where you go to to meet someone that you can tell your story
to or maybe get a free drink. And I was down and out. I wasn't feeling too great at that moment. But when I walked in, it was a guy I knew from audio production class, Mark Bryan on stage and his act in the middle of his band's rock and roll show to stop the show, recognize me and know that there was a fire on campus, and stay hold up, everybody, I want you to know there was a fire on campus.
You've probably heard about it. But I'm gonna take my sweaty Maryland ball cap off and pass it, and you're gonna put money in it for my buddy Sony, who's walking up to the stage right now. And I thought, what kind of like outrageous love is this? It just felt good. Of course, I was happy to be in the moment and have thirty four bucks stuffed in my
pocket a few minutes later. But I thought, a few months later, as I'm getting an audition for that band which ends up being hooting the Blowfish, these are good guys. These aren't just guys who were striving to get to the top of music. They're having fun on stage. They're willing to use their influence on that stage for good, which I didn't forget. And when I joined the band, I felt I was probably in the right place because of what they brought, not just musically but in their hearts.
Yeah, I'd have a real tragedy. That is one of the coolest joining of band stories. I've ever heard thirty four bucks in a condom? You wrote it?
Yeah, it was luckily not used. It was just still the wrapper and I probably never got to use it. But the moment was not lost on me. And that was the fun of writing a book is I got to go back to some moments that were vague to me or I remember them.
But when you sit down and you want to write a riveting.
Story about the moment, you got to think of what actually happened there. And the more I thought, the more I remembered, Oh my gosh, this was kind of a cool connection to my new band. And I wouldn't find out for six months, but eventually I'd be in that band that was on stage, and yeah, what a crazy thing to be homeless and then find a home.
It's one of the great stories in the book. You talk about kind of two worlds intersecting that the very first Hootie show you play, what were you doing earlier on that Saturday? Because I get a kick out of this.
Well, I had a good work ethic and I joined a couple bands, so I was, you know, scrambling. I worked forty hours at the University TV department, which and then had two bands I was in. A part of my job at the USC was to cover the Sparky Woods Football Show, and I was an assistant to one of the cameramen, running up and down the field, you know, every third down for the punt and just hustle. And that's what a youthful guy like me was built to
do at the time. And so I was in Athens, Georgia watching the game Cocks take one to the Bulldogs that day, which was pretty sweet, and I knew I had to drive my dumpy little car another couple hours to meet my bandmates at a local small college where we had my first gig with the band at a fraternity mixer. And so it was a typical day that you know, I didn't I didn't ever worry about sleep
or you know, any of that stuff. So I was happy to go work my butt off in Athens and then go to another town and then.
I'm sure I got home at three in the morning. You know, pretty happy.
Brother, That's no typical day. That's an amazing difference of all South Carolina winning between the Hedges and Athens didn't happen anymore. But that was in the late late eighties, it was possible. And you do that, and then you go play your first gig with this band that's going to be an ultra massive that's a pretty damn good Saturday.
It was. I mean, you can appreciate it when you're hustle around and you are happy and you're in and your love and life and you're doing things you get that you love a sports. I mean, suddenly a twelve hour day doesn't seem like that that much work. And I know I've listened to your thoughts after long days and long games, and you guys are on the way home. It's a delight to have to get to do something you love. And from that moment, I knew I could be in this band. I could do this.
You were four really hard working dudes. You're not the only band that was playing one hundred and fifty shows a year, but talk about that grind. You're going around. You're writing some songs that would later become globally famous and successful, but you're also playing covers. Rim was a
band you guys looked up to. I'm a massive Ram fan back from that same era, but you're playing Rim, Police Clash, Smithereens you wrote in the book about covering all these different songs, working in your originals, and kind of just doing what young, tire least musicians do right, going around in a vand playing almost every night.
Yeah, I mean, I think we would have probably played three hundred shows a year had we been able to book them or get clubs that were interested in us. We didn't know any better. But on the days that we weren't working, we were rehearsing and writing. You know, there's not a playbook for musicians. There's not or how to be in a band. So we used our sort of intellect, a little bit of it, some bravery to go long distances, or just the hope the chance of
getting seen by a record company. We had a good work ethic, and we had a talented singer, which at the time we probably had no idea how iconic Darius's voice would become. But we only knew to work, you know, and when you're having fun, like you said, the twelve hour days, no matter, driving six hours to play forty minute set for fifty dollars in a twelve pack didn't
seem like a losing proposition. It felt like opportunity, and so we always took opportunities, and finally we got lined up with a manager, Rusty Harmon, who you know, who was able to get us a little organized, and he was great at that time for stern up business, which we needed to do because we were busy writing songs, we shouldn't be managing and booking. And so we worked great together, and you know, slowly, surely we got the
attention of Atlantic Records. And I've mentioned recently to someone else that, you know, they said, you guys were so lucky to do this. I said, but luck, according to the sign in my weightlifting room in high school, said luck is where preparation meets opportunity. So I felt like, you know, yeah, we were lucky. We had to work to put ourselves in a position to win, and then the opportunity came along, and maybe that is luck.
I do want to talk about the business part of the music business, but you mentioned songwriting, and you end up being the main songwriter on hold my hand, a song that is again globally famous. You've got tens of thousands of people kind of singing along to this song eventually, and you talked about the process of writing a song and for those of us that will never experience that. Take us inside the head of a songwriter. When things
are sort of flowing and it seems effortless. You say, it's almost zen like, when the words and the chords are all kind of just come in together for something that ends up being so massively popular.
Yeah, it's again. I often parallel the mind of an athlete, or the action of throwing a ball or receiving a ball, and the action of trying to put together words and melodies and notes. When you catch yourself not having to think about it, that's when you're actually doing the thing in a zen like fashion, where in a sport it's the guys that are in the zone. The zone means you're not thinking about all the details, it's just happening.
And so the zone happened for me when I wrote hold my Hand.
Of course, it was propelling itself forward in a way that the melodies were coming. The idea that I had in my heart I wanted people to know about was coming at the same time, and the right chords were there. And man, it doesn't always happen that way. We can get so overthinking in our heads. We complicate things, say I want to make this sentence, the perfect sentence, Well do you have to or can you just say what you want to say and hold my hand? Was me
spontaneously saying something I had been feeling for years. I didn't like the heartache around me. I didn't like the oppression. I didn't like that people were voiceless and struggling. And that's exactly what I said in the song. So there were moments like that with Hoody. Since we were all novice songwriters that we didn't have to overthink it. We
didn't know what a radio song sounded like. We'd never been on radio, but we knew what was in our hearts, so we worked that sort of angle and eventually we got to radio.
You wrote that that song, which is very hopeful and upbeat, and you wrote songs across the spectrum as a band, but a lot of them were very hopeful and upbeat, and you said that you wanted to help ease some of the ugliness and the hopelessness that you had witnessed and lift people up, and it raised hurt. Your band would get shit, I think from people unfairly for trying to write happy songs, but you know you were seeing one thing, but sort of trying to write about a different side of the world.
Yeah, and so when you're writing just from your hearts and you're not interested, as we were not interested about image or what the clothes we wore, or what would people think about our music, there's also a chance to go deep in authenticity at that moment, which I think is really gives any song of personality.
I don't care who you are, what genre you're in, if.
You can be authentic. You know, there's only one original me. There's only four of us original sort of hoody guys that make up that the ingredients that are necessary. And so we were okay with being ourselves. And yeah, eventually we weren't cool. Grunge was We came out of the grunge here where it was the opposite of cool. You wanted to wear something neat or be rebellious. We weren't quite ever that. You know, we had heartache and we
live lives like everybody. It's disappointing at times, it's unfair at times, but you go through and our influences, I'll tell you, we're all over the map. That was maybe the funniest part that I always look back and go We had Darius, who you know, was raised by mainly his mom, who sang gospel in church.
But Darius liked Kiss, Darius liked Merle Haggard. Darius had all these weird interests. I was the same, you know, my first concert Kiss and Judas preached.
I love hard rock. I loved ac DC, but I also loved Barry Manilow. I also love the cheesy stuff. So by the time we get to what do us four want to sound like? It could have gone anyway in the world. The fact that we were able to manage to sound like anything is sometimes surprising because and then you add in Dean and Mark's influences, which were again all over the place.
I don't know how we ever landed where we did.
You know, that's what was cool about music in the nineties, though, when you write about eventually a crack review, the debut album blows up and sells more than ten million, then you win a couple of Grammys, and the people that presented you those two Grammys that night, speaking all over the spectrum, just shows that, you know, something was present in that era in music that it's tougher to achieve now,
where everybody's so splintered. Everybody's in lanes and silos and who passed those two Grammys to you the night that you guys won them.
Yeah, it was not very manlow, but it was Kiss in their full makeup, which was insane because we didn't see it coming. We did weren't even to wear that was that they were going to be the guys giving a trophy. We didn't think we'd win it anyway. But and then Tupac, So we've got just the moment where you want to freeze yourself in time and say, what am I doing here? I get they're there, but how
in the world did we achieve this this place? And you know, like I said, you know, having Kiss be my heroes growing up musically, and the imagery before they took their makeoff makeup off to have Gene Simmons leaning over my shoulder handing me a Grammy. He was like, I almost, you know, pee myself. I was just like, I don't know if it was joy, fear or thought he might I don't even know, but.
It's so cool to have different tastes. I mean, I was at a Kiss show and mcnichol's arena Denver, Colorado, and an older friend got me into Kiss. I really wasn't into them. I wass into a lot of other kinds of metal, and here I was like first row of the balcony leaning over watching these guys on stage, and you know, there was sort of, I don't know,
maybe more open mindedness. I think to people how they could could dip in and out of really different kinds of music back then that I don't know if it's harder now. Maybe I'm just older, but it seems that the same kind of climate doesn't quite exist anymore as it did back in those days.
Yeah, I don't think, I mean, there was some of it, but I don't think there was as much a need to declare that I am this music, all right, this is what represents me. Surely there were niches, you know, kids that listened to hard rock, or when new wave came around that was the thing, and or if you listened there listen to country, which I don't think any kids did back then. It was not cool. It was what your granddaddy listened to on the farm or something.
But I've tried to push to my kids, you know, who are between nineteen five, kids between nineteen and twenty five to keep open minded. You know, we've shown them now that through politics and all this divisiveness, that you have to declare what you are and that's your lane, and don't go into anybody else's lane. And that's the guy you don't want to like because he's not in
your lane. I don't like that, BS. And I've told my kids from a musical perspective that the more you keep your ears open, lower those walls of judgment, you're gonna be gifted with so many different styles, whether it's jazz or hip hop or country.
Don't set boundaries. Don't like think that just because you don't.
Understand it today, that it's not a great song or artistry or attempt at art. Open your mind. I don't know how my mine was not always open. I had some prejudices. Dance music is something I could never stand because I couldn't dance. I was probably jealous of all the guys that got to dance with the scantily clad girls. And I didn't like the digital feeling that new music was rolling into. But I've gotten over a lot of those prejudices, and because of that, I can listen to
the music my kids listen to. I can go back and listen to my hard stuff. I can even listen to some modern country. Darius is one of my favorite country artists. But I don't appreciate all of it. But you know, open mind, man. I just love trying to teach that to my kids.
Heymen, spread the word. There's still amazing music being made today in all genres, all types, across the spectrumen and very readily available. Unlike in the days when you guys were scratching and clawing and trying to get a label to sign on. You mentioned Atlantic Records. Yeah, eventually they were your label, but you were I guess, sort of deceived,
strung along before that. And you write in your book about the music business, you know, just being it's not your words of mind a shitty place, but you talk about deception, greed, backstabbing, ego. Why does it have to be that way? Music is such a beautiful thing, but the business surrounding it doesn't seem to be that very often.
Yeah, it's not a great awakening here. We are all as musicians and songwriters. We're trying to get up. We would like to have a few more fans and a few more streams. That's what we're all trying to do and whether we can admit it or not, that's what we want a little more reception to our art. And eventually you get up into an area where there you know there it is a business.
And but it's a nasty business, right. I mean, David Crosby comes and talks to you, guys that you've got a rock legend, giving you some advice as you're just beginning to smash it with Hoodie, and his words were, as you quoted in the book, the music business is a monstrous operation and an evil like shit storm, is what he said. I mean, this is what you're hearing from this icon is you guys want kind of launch into this and you've tasted some of that, but you're about to taste even more of it.
Yeah. Well, and his point was the one I took through our career and saved me when I would have just been going the saying I quit or this is BS, I don't like it. He saved me because he said, it's okay that there's the business. There has to be the business, so let's not try and pretend there's not a business because somebody's counting money. If there's money coming in somebody's gonna be counted and somebody's gonna be trying to steal it.
So let's acknowledge there is a business.
But let's acknowledge why we're sitting in a room together making a record with a budget from Atlantic Records is because of what it has done to your hearts. You know, you guys sit as musicians, We stay up late trying to configure chords and lyrics and it's all in our
heart and it's all mushy. Just be willing to acknowledge these two things have to meet at some point if you want to have a music career, but be able to see that dissection that the business is a yucky thing because it's dollars and cents and your music is in your heart, and don't let it get far away from that. There's a place where there we'll have to meet and hopefully you'll have an honest manager who can guide you through that and an honest attorney like we've had both of those.
But he was warning us that don't let them get diluted. And that's the problem is that some people do.
They get screwed over in business, or they're not wise in business, or they don't want there to be business, so they say, screw it, I'm just going to do art for art's sake. Well, that might last year, that might get you somewhere. But it's okay that there's a business in music. But it's eh, it's yucky. You don't want to get it too sticky.
But not just external sony. I mean bands fall apart from the inside because success can create you know, jealousy. You get huge amounts of money and fame involved, and you, guys, I always admire when I was hanging about a little bit in the periphery, how much love and respect and how unchanged you guys seem to be, at least from the outside. Despite this massive success. You go on Letterman at Sullivan Theater, the same place where the Beatles broke big.
You talked about that Dave appearance being massive. If you get in a private jet, go down and play a show in front of thirty five thousand in your home statement, that's a snapshot in the early massive success of Hoodie. And yet sometimes you guys, just we're navigating it like you're still back in the early days driving around in a van. Do you not find that remarkable that you kept it together.
I mean, maybe it's the Crosby's words, you know, seeped in enough to say, protect that good thing, but protect not only the music and the argu make, but the friendships there within a band, because those.
Are the first that start showing cracks.
Typically, because if your band is lucky enough to get big, believe me, the first thing is going to be happening is there's going to people be people in this lead singer's ear telling him how great he is and that maybe he should dodge those other guys and do something better over here and he could make more. So that's the first possible things that are going to break down. And maybe Crosby was saying, you know, don't forget that either.
Don't forget that there's a love there for four guys that have driven around in a van together, smelling each other's feet, sharing couches, chairs, hotel rooms. If we were lucky, you know, protect that thing too, and remember that's valuable and remembering what you've worked, how hard you've worked, if you get lucky enough to be on radio, finally, remember that. And I think we did. I think we did a
good job. Upbringing was super helpful. Our parents all along the way made us believe or remember that you family is important. So the four of us were, you know, step brothers from another mother. We were nothing short of brothers the amount of time we spent together. So we treated each other as family. We treated our crew that we were eventually able to hire as family, and our friends out on the road you included. You saw as you mentioned how we treated our backstage area. We protected
that that was very important to us. We didn't let some people just bust in there and start defiling it. We could defile it plenty of it ourselves as well.
I mean, we'll get to the part of your life where or partying and alcohol sort of control who He was a party band, though that the crowds were celebratory having a tremendous time partying. You guys were frankly doing that too, which was not unique to your band in the world of rock and roll. I don't know how I speaking of backstage, I got dragged out on stage on my birthday and drank a birthday tequila shot for you guys, As probably most of the crowds are, who
the hell is this guy? Game day wasn't very big yet, and I was just hanging out there. Who is it that guy? Get him off there, get back to the music. But it was a fun moment for me, and that ended up. I think that was the night I believe your manager Rusty's brand new suv and that it partially submerged, not in a river, that water was flowing across the road as one of those Carolina flash floods that happens, and somehow I ended up behind the wheel and it
never ran again that vehicle. After that fateful night. I think Dan Patrick was in there. We might have been going to Charles Barkley's party. This was like a v Foundation event. I think it's all a little foggy, I have to admit.
No, those are great fun situations you're happy to have lived and lived through because they can go bad, believe me. And yeah, that was another great night. We just loved the party. We just never really wanted that to end. So we ushered friend new friends in and Chris follow on our stage and yeah, why not.
Well, partying was a part of your life way before Hoody in your book, which is very raw and very honest and also very inspiring and a great show of strength in your part in resilience. But you said that alcohol was always a place of peace for you at first when you were a young person, and it brought you for you when you were insecure and when you had doubts. Alcohol kind of at first kind of made
them go away. To talk about sort of your early experiences with alcohol and how it became more and more a force, a dark force in your life.
Well, yeah, it signified from age fourteen some sort of maybe a couple of things that we're getting away with something. So I liked that thrill seeking aspect of it, that hey, look at me, look at us. We're doing something illegal or unlawful, and we're getting a good feeling and we're stealing something from the universe in some way.
So we like that deviant sort of aspect.
But for me, over time it became something and our society upholds this to a degree. It means we're celebrating something right. Maybe it's a hard work day, a hard work week, maybe it's an accolade or an achievement. But in our society, through ages you to hold up that glass sort of the shot, even before our show is doing shots, it means we're having a success here in
this moment. So that was fine through many years to have it represent that, and it was accurate, especially when we got big and we had dreams that were being experienced like we never thought they would be. At those times, it was a celebration. And my problem came is when things started going downhill, as our career naturally sort of descended as the next new band with tighter jeans and
cooler hair that took our place. I held on to the thing that represented celebration and success, which was the Booze. And as we went downhill, I think my bandmates were able to either accept or sort of develop, and I wasn't. So I kept grabbing onto that thing that told me we're good, right, we're celebrating, we're at we're still living, and we weren't. The true was.
Our best years of record sales were obviously behind us.
The empty seats in the auditoriums were growing, and I was starting a family and probably a little nervous about that, and I didn't know to do that. So I held on and I was always the one to bring people out and say on our off night, let's go the whole crew and the band were bowling, or we're going.
Out to this place, so let's go to a ball game.
I never wanted that celebration to end, and so I became, you know, what was recreational at some point in my life became habitual, which became medicinal, which ultimately became alcoholic.
You said that you believe that alcohol help you get more out of life. Usually it's the exact opposite that people come to find out. But you joked about it. You're a very funny guy, so you make the jokes, you deflect it. You kid yourself that your bandmates, your loved ones, your people are not hip to what's going on. But actually it becomes more and more obvious to more people, and to you as well, and the people that you love the most, that this was more than just something recreational.
This wasn't about fun anymore.
Yeah, it got dark, and the sad thing was And this probably tells my ism, my alcohol ism a little bit, is that when I first found out that people were onto me, I had heard a few people that were thinking about intervening when I realized that they were talking about me, and they were worried. He's hanging out with some odd hours. He's hanging out with a different group of people. He's prone to temper, and it's usually related
to drugs or alcohol. When I found out that there were people around me that were thinking that way, I didn't do what a normal person might do, which is say, yeah, maybe you're right, maybe I need to look at this because it could hurt not only me but my family or this organization.
Instead I went the other way. I said, oh, oh my god, they're on to me.
I've got to hide this better. I've got to have some secrets. I gotta hang out with people that are even further away that they can't see, because I need to do the things I need to do, whether I'm putting it down my throat or up my nose or wherever that chemical was being inserted. And so I did the opposite, and it would take me four darkening years to come to understand what that was. That was me in denial. It's me not listening to the truth, not
being self honest. These are basic life principles that as a guy in his late thirties, was not accepting. And I chose the alcohol because it meant celebration, it meant we're okay. And even when it was just me alone, in a room. I couldn't give that idea up. And finally, you know, I finally had to. But for the most part, everyone else seemed to develop into better, more mature thinking, and I didn't.
In the book about the descent, you just said it's about a four year period, and you do that in great to day and it's very powerful and encourage people to read or listen to it. And I enjoyed you reading your book because it's covered there just a couple of things that everybody wants to know. Sony, with someone who has a story like yours, what was the low point? Where where do the spiraling kind of hit rock bottom?
And you finally had to look yourself in the mirror and not punch the mirror, which I know you said you did a few times, and punch some walls and sort of figure out, Hey, no one's going to come save me. I've got to do this myself, and I've got to start now.
Yeah. Well, desperation is an interesting concept that I.
Think is where I where I was my turning point.
I got desperate enough after repeated, repeated failures and disappointments and hurting people trying to deny it or make it seem smaller than it was hurting myself. Eventually, it is actually frustrating and confusing to have to keep up this facade in my life of lying about where I was or how many drinks I had, or who I was with. It becomes too much, and I get desperate for peace, and I come to a place where I can't take it anymore. And I know that people at that point
in their lives with addiction, we'll seek other answers. And I'm thankful that I didn't think suicide was something I would shoot for, because I was frustrated enough that I didn't know what to do with myself. And so I got one last intervention from an unlikely source, which is my four year old daughter at the time. And you know, you get intervening, interveent interventions from bandmates and loved ones and you just look at them like a few You know,
I got this, I'm under control. But when your four year old daughter says, you know, one morning dead, you know what are you doing? And she means it purely and sort of innocently, Dad, You know what are you doing sleeping out here in the not in our house, in the studio you've built and you're not inside with mom and my brother and having pancakes and watching the Mickey Mouse Club. What are you doing? And that pierces you so directly in your heart that you can't even
give her some BS answer. I became desperate. I couldn't manage my way out of a conversation with a four year old because the truth was the answer to the question.
When she left and I was left with some idea.
Of the universe or God and myself, I said, I don't know what I'm doing. And that was the first time I'd said I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not in control anymore. I don't like it. I don't know where to go. And as a forty year old man with an inflated ego.
I was burdened with what the hell am I going to do?
And luckily I had one sort of scratch piece of paper that a guy had given me previously, a guy I used to party with who was willing to extend the offer to me, who he saw me declining rapidly, he said, you know, call me when when you're ready, you know, big wink wink there like, call me when
you're ready to get some help. And I did. I got I found that little piece of paper and call that that guy that morning, and that was the beginning of you know, surrendering and at least saying I don't I don't have enough to do this on my own. I need help. And I didn't want to.
I didn't want to have to do that because society was telling me I am successful. I have two Grammys, I have a house.
That I own, I have sports cars in my driveway and a family that looks happy.
Why should I need to ask somebody else for help?
It's it's an ego issue. It's a power trip. So I asked and I received.
For so many people, you write about it being daunting because everything in your life that you had built was some way connected to alcohol. So to suddenly break away from that grip and obviously was going to be difficult. You you talk in the book about another moment where
you found. This was a Tiger Woods wedding, I believe in the Caribbean, and after a bender you found a note apparently you had written to yourself, get help today, And something that obviously was written in a fog with a lack of clarity, was a moment of clarity for you when you look back at that, and that's that's powerful. You don't even remember writing the note, just just finding it.
Huh, well, your life. I was getting wet brained, a term that is used when someone is either in a NonStop you know, besides sleep situation with either drugs or alcohol or both, and not taking in enough good nutrition mentally and physically. I was getting a little wet and so an example of as to what you just said, I'm writing myself a note late night, probably drunk and frustrated and foggy, and not finding it later and not remembering exactly when I wrote it or what I knew
what it meant it meant. I must have been in a real bad state that I don't remember, but I was desperate enough and had some outs of desire to try and remember that this hurts or this isn't great, so I could find this piece of paper later maybe And yeah, I look at that, like what is who is that? Or who am I even? You know, it's distressing in some way, and I think that's one of the ingredients that leads to, like I said, the ultimate
feeling of desperation. I don't know what to do and this is just more evidence that I need someone.
To help me.
And fast forwarding. I don't want to give the impression this was quick or easy. You do decide to go to an AA meeting, but you write that on the way to the AA meeting you had a couple drinks and a couple of lines of coke, which is not the textbook way to begin sony a career of sobriety. But I guess that was just sort of a last hurrah and then before you could kind of step into this new world. I'm only laughing because you're laughing at
the screen in front of me. I know it's not really to a lot of people funny at all, but I recognize that.
No, I can look back after some time now and writing the book, I was already at a place where I could look back and say that looks really dumb to say. I'm you know, I've woken up, and I called the guy, and I'm going to make this sort of obligatory surrender in concept and principle and try and find out what people do that are in my situation.
And you know, fear of being a big driver of my life at that time, fear of people knowing who I really was, fear of people finding out where I've been and the deviant things that I got into as the alcoholism progressed a big thing. And my fear, i think, honestly in that moment, was what if I go to this group of people who were practicing these twelve steps and I decide I'm like them and I can't drink anymore. Well, that would mean last night was my last drink. I
can't have that. I've got some jagger master in the fridge in the garage. I think I'll see what that tastes like. So yeah, and I think I went to sort of confess to my buddies that you guys will never believe where I'm going. Right now, let's have a drink to this. And yeah, it's backwards, asked, thinking for sure again evidence that what was my mind? What kind of shape was my mind? And at that time to think that on my way to receive help, I'm going to do the exact thing that has gotten me in
this terrible situation. That doesn't make sense to anyone that doesn't think like the alcoholic and hearing laughter behind it doesn't make sense either. Ironically, you know, I got in front of a group of people who were laughing. That's where I learned that, you know, once we heal in any aspect of life, and mental illness is a hot topic now too. When there is healing, there can be laughter again. And I had forfeited my laughter. I was
too into deep for too long. And to get laughter back and to hear people expressing gratitude in the form of, you know, poking fun at one of another and themselves was a great release for me. I thought, I think I am definitely in the right place because I would like to go back to life being fun and silly.
There's so many layers of the story among them. You write in the book about getting divorced to your wife Debbie, Mark Brian, your buddy and the guitarist, and Hudie has also gotten divorced, I believe, prior to your divorce, and his ex wife Laura, and then you guys fall in love, and that's an interesting thing, whether or not your your
rock stars or old friends or not. You do write about some awkwardness, some tension and having to work through that as you sort of embrace a new love in your life.
Yeah, I mean, did we miss a moment there for a reality TV show. Chris, I feel like we probably just should have got the camera crew in the living room and said, let's roll. This thing is going to be huge.
It's kind of like the Brady Bunch. Eventually we end up having five kids under one roof, so it's but but no, I mean.
You know, it's one of those things that it's as you might imagine. You know, two grown men, and you know, an ex wife and now Laura, my new wife, trying to negotiate how to raise five kids together in some ways, and we all you hear, we've got to do this for the kids, or let's put the kids first. But you know, that's an easy word to say, but it's harder in practice to decide what everyone's new roles are. And for Mark and I I think as friends and bandmates, we wanted to continue being bandmates.
We all felt hooting the Bluefish is worth everything.
Why should we stop our art and our ability to raise money for charities and do something we love? Why should we stop that?
Because relational difficulties are changes.
So I think we never felt like the band would fall apart, but we had to decide who we were for each other you know, it's one thing to do with ex spouses that is difficult, but as friends, I don't think a lot of people have to go through that. And Mark and I have had to negotiate those those roles.
Who are we now Okay, now you're step fathering, or now we're living in different towns and we're trying to do school function and sports events and you know, drivers license and kids like it's a mess on some levels unless everybody that's in there cooperates and says, well, let's answer this question. What's the best thing for that kid at this moment. Is it for one of us to stand up, as you know, in this time, to be the leader. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it meant I had
to sit back and say I'm just a stepdad. I got to sit back and let Mark be the dad. And you negotiate all those things in real time through the years, and then the next thing, you know, kids are having girlfriends and boyfriends and like I said, learning to drive cars and then going to college, and we're at a place now in hindsight that it's kind of beautiful. We all feel like we've.
Accomplished a thing, you know, to raise kids up to certain points where they're out of the house and look back and say, man, that worked. Somehow, that insanely crazy thing worked.
And so I think we both have a gratitude for each other and for the band and the greater, weirder Hooty family.
That's beautifully put. I mean, it's an evolution process, Thank goodness. Perhaps the kids welfare was a factor and decisive one of you guys might have come to blows. It might have been a different situation if you didn't know the welfare of kids in there. But it's awesome. I know it took time, it wasn't easy, but you guys seem to be in a good place. And you know, back in the music front, I mean, Hoody is still together.
You guys still play big shows. There was a massive tour in it was the twenty nineteen which is the twenty fifth anniversary of Crank p review the Monster album. And you guys do still come together for Hoodie Fest and for amazing charity causes and admits Darius's Monster solo country Careerly, it's just so there's still plenty of music and you still do see your bandmates I guess pretty regularly.
Then, yeah, you know, life develops and changes and are we move and we move on, but there's always an understanding that we started this thing as a band for a damn good reason because we liked making music and we liked each other. And the question came over the years, how can you sustain that when you grow in different ways and you have families, and then the families become broken and then intertwined again, and then Darius has start them in country is just another thing along the way
that what do you do with these changes? And that's what it all ends up. The question that we get to keep answering or is that what do you do with change? It becomes a big theme. I go and do a lot speaking and corporate speaking now and it's
about adapting to change because change keeps happening. And it's a great question as we older men get into and maybe are more successful at doing, is that you can't stop change, so you better figure out how you're going to adapt when you have changed that you didn't sign up for, maybe change that you caused, maybe things you just can't even control.
Because we want to live happy lives.
We're here to laugh and smile and have some joy, and what do you do when you're handed, you know, cards that aren't great. So I've enjoyed learning just enough to put a microphone in front of my mouth and talk to people like I know what I'm doing.
None of us know what we're doing. None of us really know what's going on and what we're doing. But I think you can make a convincing case that you've learned some things. And I think one of the powerful things about your message is that, Okay, you you keep alcohol at bay. Many people out of humility when not say beat it, but you keep alcoholism at bay. But that doesn't solve all your problems, right, because that was covering up some of the things that was numbing you
to some of the things. I think it's very powerful. In your book you talk about this is important for anybody confronting addiction, that just getting past that will not fix everything. You had to do a lot of hard work, right. You wondered if you could write a song. You wondered if you could perform while sober, because it had been so long since you've been sober.
Yeah, yeah, and yeah, fear again, a lot of fear. How am I going to do that? Or all the things that I've been doing. Do I have to stop doing them?
Or do they become boring? What happens here, Because if you've.
Centered everything around the party, and the party has to dissolve your face with some real questions. And you know, I was able to the obsession for alcohol started lowering in correlation to me doing sort of a personal house cleaning, a personal inventory of you know, really getting honest with what my thoughts and my ideas and my fears meant to be and how they drove me to bad outcomes. You know, honestly, our problems are all the same, Chris right.
We have fears and doubts, and there's unfairness, and we're self centered sometimes and we're prideful. We all have the same problems. So when I started looking, I realized, yeah, I don't know how to drink successfully, but mainly my problems are just like everybody else's. I'm not that unique as I thought I was. But the thing was, I said, you want to see, uh, you think my problems are bad, you ought to see my solutions, and this is one and that really sums up what I got to, which
was like I have the same problems as everybody. My solutions are really crap. I and mostly for many years when they got bad, I drank because it temporarily eased them. But as anyone is developing figure out what your solutions are, it's about how do you face these life things that are going to happen? People dying, people disappointing you, you disappointing them. How do you face What are you going to use as a solution Because we all have the same damn problems.
Faith has become a very powerful part of your life. Your music is largely faith based people. You have a terrific EP at Remember Tomorrow, which I enjoy listening to. And there's a song Sony called Unafraid and one of the lines is you want to fight the fear and live my life unafraid? And are you able to live it free of fear that those old demons might come back and try to take control or is there still is that what you're trying to be unafraid of at this point in your life?
Well, like was mentioned before, the moment that an athlete doesn't have to think about the technique or the moment, the songwriter doesn't have to think in a complex way about a lyric. It just is flowing out. In a similar way, my life today is free of the obsession. I don't have to worry about the details of Oh, there's a bar down the street, or there's a liquor store there, or I'm hanging around the people that I
used to party with. I don't have to worry about those that I can be more in the moment as a result of having solved some of my solution difficulties, so I get to be free to a large degree.
If my motivation is right, I can go anywhere I want.
I can go to the concert where people are partying and going next level. I can go backstay to shows where people are doing crazy things. I can be in a bar, I can do tailgating. And that's the result of being free. I've got a serenity that is higher and unafraid means that I'm not afraid of going back there. There's a mention in a book that says we recoil from something from alcohol like a hot flame, like and I know today to drink or to pick up a drug or a chemical is like it would be like
grabbing a hot flame. So I'm not too worried about that hot flame anymore. I've got that much sense. The way I solve it is trying to share it with other guys. Who are you trying to get in on this journey? And that helps me remember who I've been. That helps me remember what the solutions are and unafraid a song I'm so happy to sing at all of my events reminds people that we do have to get through some things. We do have to find better solutions.
Some of our ideas that we've been in love with that thought works so well, may not be great ideas. But when we can find the better solutions, we don't have to live in fear. We can live in a higher piece and on a higher plane. And that's what my spirituality is today, finding out what piece means, how I can achieve it. That I can't live a fully
peaceful life, that's unrealistic too. We do have suffering as humans, but I'm afraid I want to give people an ounce of courage to say, you take that leap, even if it's facing something you've been trying to ignore, you know. So that's one of my favorites. I'm glad you lashed out of that one. It's been a fun one for me.
I like one of the things you say you'll live by now feel it and heal it. In other words, don't try to push it aside, don't try to deny those things, whatever lightness or darkness they bring, and then heal it. But the process of working your way to a place where that's possible has been It has been cool to hear you read about and and talk about here.
Yeah, we're not you know, we men are not gifted unfortunately with feeling things and healing things. We don't want to even talk about them. And I think that's part of our unfortunate nature is compared to the females, is that they're willing to talk. Let's be honest.
They can talk through some things, and they can get things up. They're willing to feel it and talk about it.
And we, as men, and I talk to a lot of men's group, aren't quite wired that way.
And so I think we have to work a little extra hard to say, gosh, Chris.
What are your feelings now? And you know, are you hurt? Are you afraid? We don't want to do that, but we need to do that. And so the speeches I get up to give, or the moments I get with a microphone are to encourage a lot of the men, especially, come on, guys, we got to learn to talk. This is a skill we might have to learn.
Late in life, but when do need to grab hold of.
It, that's powerful the course of your life. I don't know if you're a reflective person. All the different chapters, all the different piece of the tapestry that we all have, it's pretty remarkable. I would like to end with a funny story that you tell in the book. I mean, you talk about during those those amazing years of the rise of hoodie, you're playing a gig while watching a US soccer game against Columbia. You've got a monitor there that Clintons are in the house. You're playing this gig
while watching soccer. That's a very faithful game that the US soccer fans might remember. We won the game over Columbia. It was an own goal by Andres Escobar, who ended up going back to Columbia and being murdered because of that. But this is the idea that that and sports and music we're always intertwined. For you guys, you're playing a gig, you're watching soccer game, and then after that, years later, Alexi Lalas, who was part of that group ends up
opening for your band in Europe. Yes, he's a pretty damn good musician actually, as well as being a Fox broadcaster and an ex soccer and and practical jokes are a part of of the end of tour rituals, right with the opening band and the headliner. I've seen I've seen a few of them unfold. We we don't have time to get into it. But Radiohead and Ram played jokes on each other. So Alexi's band opens for you guys, and then ends up pranking you pretty good. It's one of the better ones I've heard.
Yeah, they really thought it out. It took a little bit of work as well. Sometimes you don't have to do much, it's just running on stage and being disturbing, but sometimes it includes outfits or bigger pranks that need some thinking. And theirs was great because they wanted to come out and interrupt our song.
Which is a typical way to to uh do it.
But and so they do a little cute little dance that's during the only one to be with you, And there's sort of two of them on either side of Dean and Mark and I'm back there laughing. Oh, they're doing another kind of stripping. They're stripping down. Well, they're doing little stripped easier people. This is getting interesting. They're in their boxers and they're continuing to dance, and the crowd is now really drawn in. They're like, oh, this
is going to be a good prank. And as they do a sort of coordinated dance move, they turn around with their backsides to the audience and drop trial and I can't see that they have written across all of their arses only want to be with you in It's one of those times where you're thankful to be not in the audience being the drummer. And this moment is even made better imagining later, which Alectui recounted tom when they realize, oh, we've written sharpies on our asses. Now
we have to get this off. And that's what true friends and bandmates are for, ladies and gentlemen. Is who is willing to scrub the title of a hoodie the Buffers song off? Your bandmates?
But your life has been filled with the silliness and fun but also some seriousness and deep power. And thanks for bringing all of it, Sony and delivering the message. And it's great to see in a great place. I'd love to see you actually in person and reconnect because we do share some common things. But you're out there doing some great, great stuff and inspiring people and delivering that message. So thanks for sharing it with me today.
Thanks so much, y'all.
I really enjoyed that conversation. You know, one of the joys of a podcast is, besides getting to know new people, once in a while, if you're lucky, you can reconnect with a very old acquaintance. I know, you know the feeling maybe you haven't talked to him in many years, but you just start talking and it clicks and it feels great. Please check out Sony's book Swimming with the Blowfish, and his EP is called Remember Tomorrow. You can follow him on Instagram at Sony Time sixty four and it's
s O Ni Time sixty four. As always, grateful to my co executive producer Jennifer Dempster and other folks on Octagon. I'll talk to you soon.